Weddingbee Blog

Hive, we’ve got one very large and mixed up wedding party. I’ve gone through it all before, but it’s about to happen again. Bear with me.

I have a maid of honor, a best man, six bridesmaids and two more guys standing up with me.

Mr. Kettle has a best man, a maid of honor, and eight groomsmen.

We have two jr. bridesmaids, two flower girls, two ring bearers, two ushers, and three hostesses.

There’s been some discussion of what to call all these non-traditional wedding party members. My dad just calls them all bridesmaids and groomsmen. That doesn’t sit too well with my three guys standing up with me. They’re not bridesmaids after all.

Momma Kettle and I had a conversation about it that went something like this:

Another personal cartoon of questionable quality. Eventually I’ll figure out the best way to color/photograph these.

We immediately saw that we didn’t really see eye to eye on what to name all these members of the wedding party.

We have to come up with a pretty firm way of naming these people so it will be the same in all our wedding literature. I’m thinking about wedding newsletters, and of course, the actual programs for the wedding.

Plus, I’d like the next time Daddy Kettle brings up my people, he doesn’t call them something that makes them not want to admit participation.

I’m pretty sure we’re definitely going to call our four main people best men and maids of honor. We’ll just each have a best man and maid of honor. No one seems to be struggling with those titles.

But then there are all the others. Bridesmaids and groomsmen are easy enough. But should I really be calling my guys “bridal attendants”? And why would anyone call them “honor attendants”? Doesn’t that take away from the maids of honor? Maybe I should just call them “bridesmen”? I dunno hive. Help please!

And then there are the ushers/hostesses. It would be easier to just call all of them ushers. Growing up in the churches we both did, ushers are a part of church service and they can be guys and girls, but in the wedding world, aren’t ushers traditionally guys only? Should I just leave them as hostesses and ushers or should I call them all ushers?

I’d like to settle this for once and for all. I don’t want to make people uncomfortable with their titles. Maybe there’s some way to just generalize it and call them “Miss Kettle’s Wedding Party” and “Mr. Kettle’s Wedding Party”?  I’m going into title overload here. I’m sinking and could use some good old hive logic!